Steven Spielberg's Lincoln has missed out on every big best film award since
the season began. Could the Oscars change this, asks Robbie Collin.

Hats off to the Iowa Film Critics’ Circle and the North Texas Film Critics’ Association, two bold critical bodies who have both committed the ultimate act of awards season insubordination: not giving their best film prizes to Ben Affleck’s Argo.

As far as I can see, these are the only two professional bodies in the world who instead gave their top honour this year to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. Just a month ago that decision might have seemed entirely unremarkable and possibly a bit boring, although it now looks like a radical provocation by some kind of extremist film-reviewing sect. (Perhaps it was this kind of dangerous thinking that split the North Texas Film Critics’ Association from their presumably stuck-in-the-mud, Argo-loving Southern peers.)

Critics and members of the film business everywhere have all been watching Lincoln: we know this because Daniel Day-Lewis has consistently been voted Best Actor for his portrayal of President Abe at the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, and umpteen other industry prizegivings and shindigs. But magisterially acted and beautifully shot as Lincoln inarguably is, the film seems to be more admired than loved, and Spielberg’s solemn drama about the mechanics of triumph has become the year’s unlikeliest serial runner-up.

To me, it’s always felt like a film out of time: had Lincoln been released in the 1980s or early 90s, when the Academy was handing Best Picture to films like Chariots of Fire, Gandhi and Dances with Wolves, we would surely be looking at a Spielberg sweep.

But of the 12 categories in which it has been nominated, only one (Day-Lewis, for Best Actor) feels like a dead cert. Spielberg has a strong chance at Best Director – no Affleck in that category, after all, although there is an Ang Lee – and Tommy Lee Jones could also take Best Supporting Actor, although he has strong competition from both the BAFTA-bolstered Christoph Waltz and a middling but well-liked turn from Robert De Niro. Tony Kushner’s unashamedly intelligent script also feels like a natural award-winner, although in the adapted screenplay category it is up against both David Magee’s nimble Life of Pi adaptation and the trophy-sucking electromagnet that is Argo.

Of course Lincoln may well go on to trample Argo, Life of Pi and the others into the mud tonight, although it seems far likelier that the Academy will continue its streak of championing a perceived underdog – the last four ceremonies have ended in victories for Slumdog Millionaire over The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Hurt Locker over Avatar, The King’s Speech over The Social Network, and The Artist over, well, everything. But what scarcely anyone outside of Iowa and North Texas seems to have noticed is that this year’s true underdog is a $65-million, two-and-a-half-hour long period drama made by Steven Spielberg.